Trouble has a way of making you realize just where you stand, musically or otherwise. So it spoke - or shredded - volumes that the Bye Bye Blackbirds leader Bradley Skaught's response to a recent annus horribilis was to get the rock out.

Coping with the drama of lineup shifts and the trauma of sudden unemployment, the Oakland denizen and his power pop combo knew their new album, "We Need the Rain," had to cut through the noise.

"We really wanted to make a rock record, getting back to some of our classic rock and guitar rock core and from a musical standpoint making it rocking and visceral," says the Tacoma, Wash., transplant, 37, who was weaned on area rockers such as Girl Trouble and the Sonics. "Funnily enough, it did carry over lyrically. In the past, everything I wrote was more ruminative. This was more immediate. What's going on now - almost anxious and unsettled."

The climax to that tempestuous period arrived this spring, toward the end of recording: Skaught's musical mentor, Scott Miller of Game Theory and the Loud Family, died.

"For a record that seemed to be surrounded by so much turmoil, it was the most painful and devastating blow," Skaught e-mailed later. "It made it even more important to me to realize the record as a kind of anchor, something to channel all that chaos through and somehow find a way to be still in the midst of it.

"It's the first record we've made that we couldn't take to him and get that final vote of confidence on, so we dedicated it to him."

Judging from the sweetly melancholy jingle-jangle and satisfyingly gutsy guitar and bass parts, Miller would have been game. The LP's sole cover, Free's "Broad Daylight," smoothly slips in, with soulful crunch, amid the handclap-dashed, Big Star-ry "Don't Come Back Now," the harmony-powered "Waiting for the Drums" and the Crazy Horse-does-spaghetti-Western "Spin Your Stars."

"Brand New Sitting Still," which Skaught wrote with his friend Paula Carino, points to the power of meditation during hard times: "Not to sound too hippie," he says brightly, "it's about finding the stillness to let everything happen and let things unfold."

These days, however, Skaught is attempting to mix in a jolt of forward-thrust energy with the tranquil acceptance. After all, "We Need the Rain" is the first full-length CD that the Bye Bye Blackbirds have released on their own in their almost seven-year history.

"This is the first time I've had to sit at a desk myself with a cigar and make all these decisions," says Skaught, tongue planted in cheek. "But I feel like it's a good record, and I want to find as many homes for it as I can."